Quartz:
Delivery drivers for local milk and cream company Oakhurst Dairy have been tussling with their employers over whether they qualify for overtime. On March 13, a US court of appeals determined that certain clauses of Maine’s overtime laws are grammatically ambiguous. Because of that lack of clarity, the five drivers won their appeal and were found eligible for overtime. The case now can be heard in a lower court.
The profoundly nerdy ruling is also a win for anyone who dogmatically defends the serial comma.
This is a great story for the grammar nerds among us.
I’m a believer in the Oxford comma. However, if you read that last clause as a combined activity, then you also have to notice there’s no “and” or “or” in that list. So honestly, it was obvious what the meaning was. Wrong decision.
The grammar nerd would note that this list failed parallelism (and that made the grammar unclear). The comma should always be used if the mean is unclear, but I never use it in places where it isn’t needed. If the writing needs it, maybe there is another issue to consider.
“We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin” http://i.imgur.com/fycHx.jpg